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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. This leaves improvement as the way to go, or a renomination in a few months if improvement appears infeasible.  Sandstein  13:07, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Boiler design

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Boiler design (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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An article devoid of any worthwhile structure or content. This is one of many articles, almost all equally poor, created as part of coursework for an Indian college. See Wikipedia:India Education Program/Courses/Fall 2011/Machine Drawing and Computer Graphics and WP:Ambassadors. This project has failed and has now become harmful to the broader goals of the encyclopedia. It's time to start cleaning up afterwards. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would you please care to point out the sections within this article that are helpful to an understanding of boiler design, and thus worthy of preservation. I agree that boiler design is potentially a worthy topic for WP, but there's just nothing in here worth having. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • All of them. For instance, consider the section in which we are told that a blow-off cock is required by the Indian Boiler Act and its purpose is explained. If we should doubt these facts, they may be verified by reference to a work such as this. The boiler article says something of this but gives it a quite different name (continuous blowdown valve) and does not explain the legal requirement. We should therefore retain all this valuable information per our editing policy. Warden (talk) 11:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We've long had glossary of boiler terminology. This covers worthwhile topics such as fusible plug, blow-down cock and the rest. Although these components are indeed important and worthy of coverage, they have little influence on the design of boilers. We should not excuse this article its off-topic digressions that exist solely to pad it, when the topic itself is being failed so badly. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The purpose of a glossary is to support articles, not to contain essential details. A blow-off cock is not a digression but a vital component and so forms a fundamental part of the design. It should also be noted that you have a history of editing that glossary article but have not mentioned your special interest in this topic. This nomination seems to be improper ownership behaviour contrary to our behavioural guidelines. Warden (talk) 16:53, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So if you dislike the glossary so much, feel free to AfD it. Likewise you might enjoy raising this at AN/I and getting me topic banned for the crime of knowing something about a subject.
Have you ever sat down and really thought about what you're in favour of and trying to achieve here? The absolutist retention of all articles, no matter how bad they are? Andy Dingley (talk) 17:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Warden, please drop the bad faith assumptions. Andy is working on several problem articles produced by the Indian Eduction Programme to improve them. We've undeleted one of them for him to work on today. Discuss the article and not the editors. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:28, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an assumption - it is clear from the nomination which says essentially nothing about the content - just a blanket condemnation which is blatantly false. The main point of the nomination is to explain who wrote the article and that they are bad people who must be stopped. The nomination is an ad hominem attack and does not reference any deletion policy. It is quite improper, being contrary to Wikipedia's fundamental policies and principles, and seems intended to disrupt a good faith outreach project sponsored by the Foundation and a respectable educational institution. Warden (talk) 07:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then have the good grace to state that, and AGF without making presumptions of BF by editors. It's not necessary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To explain the causality here, I have no previous connection with the Indian project but I do mostly write content on engineering history. The Pune college engineering course thus put up several articles for creation where I'd already worked on, or even written from scratch, an article there already. This brought their project, and in turn the problems with it, to my attention. As to boilers, then I'm also the author of most of the content under Category:Boilers (although this apparently makes me an unfit person to work on such articles!).
We could use an article on boiler design. This isn't it. The process by which we acquired this article is so poor and so riddled with copyvios, that we would be best served by deleting the whole article (and this is one of several). There's no useful content in here, there's certainly no useful structure (have you tried to read this article?) and such problems are never solved on WP by piecemeal editing, only by re-planning an article from scratch. We might choose to recycle parts of this article into a real article, but given the low quality of what's there and the risk of copyvios too (read the Ambassadors pages for just how bad this is), it's not worth the task of re-using and a clean start is just quicker and easier.
The Colonel's next step is usually (for we've been here before) to claim that I should WP:SOFIXIT myself. There are the usual reasons why not - because I'm busy anyway, because it's risky to work on something at AfD, because I've published Yarrow boiler already this week if he wants to claim again that I haven't completed my assigned work quota. Mostly though I left the Pune articles well alone because they're supposed to be student assignments and we ought to give the students a chance to write them independently. They have however had this chance and blown it in a mess of wiki-harmful copyvios, so now it's time to act preventatively. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or redirect (but not a very useful one) or change to stub (but not useful if it just duplicates a section of Boiler and there's quite a few articles like this to work through). Anything that's worth keeping in this could be moved into Boiler. Only reason to keep would be as an example of the folly of telling students (especially those with limited English) to write their essays in WP. DexDor (talk) 09:52, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See AfD rationale, and Wikipedia talk:India Education Program and you'll undertstand the problem. AfD is not only a discussion about notability, but also about the suitability for inclusion of articles that don't meet the strict categories of CSD.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:20, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not so — boiler design is discussed in detail in numerous encyclopedia. For example, in the Encyclopedia Americana: "Boiler Design. — In boiler design, careful consideration continued to be given to the following factors : maximum firebox volume, evaporation surface, and gas area through the tubes and flues ; relatively short tubes in combination with ...". Note also that User:SummerPhD has been engaged in petty conflict with me for several days now and his counterfactual contribution here seems to be a part of this activity. Warden (talk) 08:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:56, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I've added some book sources to a new Further reading section of the article:
  • Buecker, Brad (2002.) "Basics of boiler and HRSG design." PennWell Corporation. ISBN 0-87814-795-0
  • Malek, Mohammad A. (2005.) "Power boiler design, inspection, and repair: ASME code simplified." McGraw-Hill. ISBN
  • Stromeyer, C.E. (1893.) "Marine boiler management and construction." Longmans, Green, and Co.
Northamerica1000 (talk) 01:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Look at what this article has in it.
   1 Considerations in boiler design
   2 Pre-requisites in a boiler design
   3 General design procedure of boiler
   4 Manufacturing techniques
   5 Material selection
   6 Types of boiler accessories and mountings
   7 Common instrumentation and control systems used in boilers
   8 Advantages and disadvantages of contemporary boilers
   9 Testing of boilers
   10 Recent developments boiler design
   11 References
   12 Further reading
   13 External links

And compare that with what is in boiler. I don't see any duplicate content here. Most of it would only fit here, not there. This works best as a separate article. Sources seemed to have been found already. Dream Focus 04:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no serious claim that this isn't a good topic, merely that this is a non-article. The major omissions of significant topics are bad enough to make the article unworkable. The coverage of what is here is almost childish in its simplicity. Its prose, simply as a piece of writing, conveys nothing. I dare say that any editor with some experience of "car repair" or home maintenance could have written an article just as good as this from memory and basic common sense, without even needing to study a single source, text or reference on boilers themselves. This looks like an article, but it isn't an article. If you read this article, just what did you learn about boiler design? There's nothing, and still nothing, in here! Andy Dingley (talk) 00:26, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
AFD is not cleanup and you can't delete something because you don't like it. AFD is a last resort, not a first. It is a good topic, it has proven itself a notable one as well, and it has valid content in it. Are you not able to understand something if the information isn't written in a certain way? Dream Focus 01:01, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, AfD is not cleanup. This article, to continue as a valuable article, would require cleanup. AfD and ARS "rescue" cannot deliver this. This is why we're better deleting.
Cleaning this article into an adequate form requires two initial steps: some understanding of the topic content, then an article plan that gives some coherent, readable structure by which to explain this. It's hard to tack such things on afterwards, I've never seen it achieved through ARS' hurried cross-discipline copyediting. It certainly hasn't happened here, despite considerable recent change. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:43, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete student homework. I'm pretty sure they didn't pass. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I think this has potential to be an article, which is the usual standard for keeping it. I am an eventualist - give this article a chance. I know nothing about the topic, so I may not be the best user to edit it. Bearian (talk) 19:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This article is not well done, but it does have reliable sources. Poor quality means we need rewriting, more material with sources, in general, more work to improve the quality. Deletion is not a remedy when the topic is worthwhile and the sources are available. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:00, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep admitted to be a notable topic. The article is clearly informative. There are hundreds of possible references over two centuries--very reasonably so, as this was the major technical problem during the early part of the Industrial revolution. I think it needs to be rewritten in a format that will look less like an outline, but that;s just a matter of editing. A.D.'s argument that it is incapable of improvement does not seem reasonable to me. Any ordinarily intelligent person who knows high school math can understand the subject . It's already in a basically radable structure, and there's hundreds of regular editors here skilled enough in organization to improve it. The argument that if the improvement doesn't happen in 7 days it will never happen afterwards is belied by the history of almost every major article on Wikipedia--and is an argument contrary to the basic concept of making an encyclopedia by crowd-sourcing. That, by necessity, happens over time. We're not Wikinews. DGG ( talk ) 23:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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